Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films
Janus Films was one of the first distributors to bring what are now regarded as classic world cinematic masterpieces to the United States. In this regard, Janus can be credited with helping to introduce American audiences to the films of Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa and many others. This series celebrates their first 50 years.
Links:
Chicago Tribune review
Chicago Reader review
Films Include:
The 400 Blows | Ballad of a Soldier | Beauty and the Beast | Children of Paradise
Cleo From 5 To 7 | The Cranes Are Flying | Day of Wrath | Death of a Cyclist
The Earrings of Madame de... | Fires on the Plain | High and Low | Jules and Jim
Knife in the Water | Kwaidan | Lady Vanishes | The Organizer | Phantom Carriage
Pickpoket | Play Time | The Seventh Seal | Lady Vanishes | Umberto D | Viridiana
Wages of Fear | Walkabout | Wild Strawberries | WR: The Mysteries of the Organism
Zazie in the Metro
The 400 Blows
| January 12, 7:00 & January 13, 9:201959, Francois Truffaut, France, 99m
Francois Truffaut's first feature film is a landmark in French cinema. Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is a 13-year-old boy who can't seem to do anything right. As a result, Antoine runs away from school and his difficult family, living on the streets of Paris and committing petty crimes. A truly impressive film, The 400 Blows is raw, honest, and intensely emotional. (in French with English subtitles) Showing with Antoine and Colette.
Ballad of a Soldier
| January 17, 9:20 & January 18, 5:201959, Grigori Chukhrai, Soviet Union, 89m
Grigori Chukhrai's film about a young soldier named Alyosha who is granted a leave during WWII and falls in love with the beautiful Shura during a train trip home through his war-torn country, was, along with The Cranes Are Flying, the key Soviet film of the 1950s. (in Russian with English subtitles)
Beauty and the Beast
| January 12, 5:00 & January 18, 9:201946, Jean Cocteau, France, 96m
Jean Cocteau's remarkable 1946 tale is one of the only films ever made to truly capture the spirit, as well as the look and feel, of a fairy tale. Cocteau's enchanted world brims with life and scintillating emotions. (in French with English subtitles)
Children of Paradise
| January 14, 2:001945, Marcel Carne, France, 190m
Like many films made in France during the German occupation, Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert's glorious epic of the early 19th century Parisian theater (and underworld) was profoundly affected by the war. The occupation shadows every frame and gives Children its remarkable sense of breathless romantic immediacy. The result, of course, is one of the most enduring and beloved films of all time. (in French with English subtitles)
Cleo from 5 to 7
| January 13, 2:00 & January 15, 9:201962, Agnes Varda, France, 90m
Agnes Varda's feature film debut injected a woman s perspective into the all-male world of the nouvelle vague, its lighter-than-air tone making the gravity beneath the surface all the more deeply felt. We are with a pop singer with the stage name of Cleo Victorie (Corinne Marchand), and we stay with her for 90 minutes of almost real time as she awaits the results of a medical test. Varda's Cleo is an exhilarating and deeply penetrating film. (in French with English subtitles) Showing with Zero de Conduite.
The Cranes Are Flying
| January 19, 5:30 & January 20, 11:30am1957, Mikhali Kalatazov, Soviet Union, 94m
On June 22, 1941, two lovers are ambling through the streets of Moscow, desperately in love. In a matter of hours, they are wrenched apart by war, following the surprise Nazi invasion. Soviet veteran director Mikhail Kalatazov's magnificently expressive film, along with Chukhrai's Ballad of a Soldier, came to symbolize the hopes and indomitable spirit of an entire nation during the period of the post-Stalinist thaw. (in Russian with English subtitles)
Day of Wrath
| January 22, 5:151943, Carl Dreyer, Denmark, 97m
Carl Dreyer's film is the story of a minister s wife who falls in love with his son in 1623 Denmark and is subsequently accused of witchcraft. Ultimately a meditation on desire and the limits humanity imposes on its own freedoms. (in Danish with English subtitles)
Death of a Cyclist
| January 24, 5:30 & January 25, 9:401955, Juan Antonio Bardem, Spain, 88m
Juan Antonio Bardem brought a new frankness and an oppositional political consciousness to Spanish cinema during the Franco era. His international breakthrough came in 1955 with this pointed portrait of class division in his home country, in which a well-to-do adulterous couple accidentally runs down a poor man on a bicycle and then leave him to die for fear of exposure. (in Spanish with English subtitles)
The Earrings of Madame de...
| January 20, 7:301953, Max Ophuls, France & Italy, 105m
Set in the glittering world of Paris high society in the dizzy days before World War One, Max Ophuls shows his skill in depicting the world of European society. Madame is a beautiful woman married to Andre (Charles Boyer) a worldly army general. She is pursued by numerous men in hope of an illicit affair. She doesn't say yes, but never quite says no. Ophuls' sense of staging and camera movement perfectly capture not just the mood and feel of the time, but also the emotions of the characters. (in French with English subtitles)
Fires on the Plain
| January 22, 9:30 & January 23, 7:201959, Kon Ichikawa, Japan, 110m
Eiji Funakoshi is Private Tamura, a deserter wandering through the blasted Phillipine island of Leyte as the Japanese army retreats and the Americans advance.
It's a masterpiece.- Paulie Kael (in Japanese with English subtitles)
High and Low
| January 14, 7:451963, Akir Kurosawa, Japan, 143m
Akir Kurosawa s adaptation of Evan Hunter's novel King's Ransom is more accurately translated as Heaven and Hell, a reflection of the film's theme as well as its structure. In the first half, a Tokyo businessman (Toshiro Mifune) learns that the son of his chauffeur has been kidnapped. In the second half, Kurosawa adopts a more frenzied, nervous style as Mifune's Gondo travels through the lower depths in search of the young kidnapper Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamakazi). (in Japanese with English subtitles)
Jules and Jim
| January 21, 4:20 & January 23, 9:401961, Francois Truffaut, France, 105m
Jules and Jim is François Truffaut's intense, beautiful, enigmatic film about the lifelong friendship between two writers – French novelist Jim (Henri Serre) and Austrian children's author Jules (Oskar Werner) – and their mutual love for the eccentric Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). (in French with English subtitles)
Knife in the Water
| January 21, 9:101962, Roman Polanski, Poland, 94m
One of the greatest debuts in the history of cinema, as sharp as the edge of a razor. On their way to the lake for a weekend of sailing, a wealthy journalist and his much younger wife are accosted by a young hitchhiker who jumps in front of their car. Annoyed by the youth's daredevil posturing, the journalist nevertheless invites him to join the couple on their boat, initiating a series of competitive games between the two men. (in Polish with English subtitles)
Kwaidan
| January 16, 7:451965, Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 161m
This visually and aurally ravishing widescreen film, perhaps the greatest of director Masaki Kobayashi, is adapted from the ghostly tales of Lafcadio Hearn. The level of stylization – in color, composition, music, sound, speech and movement – of these four tales is never less than breathtaking. Kwaidan bankrupted Kobayashi's production company, but the effort was well worth it: there s nothing else like it in all of cinema. (in Japanese with English subtitles)
The Lady Vanishes
| January 20 and 21, 11:30am & January 25, 5:001938, Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 97m
Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film, set almost entirely on a moving train, is one of his most enjoyable and beloved, and for good reason: he and his cast shuttle back and forth between high comedy and mounting suspense with an agility that is nothing short of virtuosic. An old woman's disappearance leads a baffled young woman into a dizzying web of intrigue. (in English)
The Organizer
| Jan 21, 6:30 & Jan 25, 5:001963, Mario Monicelli, Italy, 130m
One of the best films by the great Mario Monicelli, with the incomparable Marcello Mastroianni as Sinigaglia, a Genoan visiting Turin who is appalled by the conditions when he visits a textile factory and stays on to organize a strike.
Marcello Mastroianni in one of his best roles...it cries out for rediscovery.- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader. (in Italian with English subtitles)
The Phantom Carriage
| January 21, 2:001921, Victor Sjostrom, Sweden, 100m
In this supernatural film, one of the greatest films of the silent era, a drunkard is the last person to die on New Year's Eve and is doomed to drive the dreaded Phantom Carriage of legend for a year. (silent, presented with live organ accompaniment)
Pickpocket
| January 27 and 28, Febraury 3 and 4, 11:30am1959, Robert Bresson, France, 75m
Inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classic novel Crime and Punishment, Robert Bresson's Pickpocket tells the story of a man whose attraction to crime threatens to condemn him forever – spiritually as well as physically. (in French with English subtitles)
Play Time
| February 17 and 18, 11:30am1967, Jaques Tati, France & Italy, 126m
Jacques Tati's fourth feature was 10 years in the making and he risked everything on it. M. Hulot wanders through an unrecognizable modern Paris of steel and glass skyscrapers as he tries to keep an appointment. Sight and sound gags abound in this superbly constructed film. (in English & French with English subtitles)
The Seventh Seal
| January 16, 5:45 & January 24, 7:201956, Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 105m
The film that gained Ingmar Bergman an international reputation is set during a single day in the Middle Ages. The film concerns the philosophical quandary of Anonius Block (Max von Sydow), a knight returning from the Crusades to a homeland ravaged by the plague. In the midst of his moral and religious confusion, he is visited by Death, a black-cloaked figure who is ready to call the knight from earth. (in Swedish with English subtitles)
Umberto D
| March 10 and 11, 11:30am1952, Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 91m
Vittorio De Sica is said to have considered this his greatest work. An elderly man on a fixed pension is about to be forced out into the streets of Rome with only his beloved dog to comfort him. Shattering, all the way up to the tear-jerking conclusion. (in Italian with English subtitles)
Viridiana
| January 13, 4:45 & January 15, 7:201961, Luis Bunuel, Spain, 90m
Viridiana is a novice on the verge of taking her vows when she nearly raped by her uncle and then inherits his farm. In an act of charity, she opens the farm up to a marauding troupe of beggars, but to her dismay they ruin the main house in a wild orgy culminating in a gross parody of the Last Supper. Upon its release in 1961, Viridiana was condemned by the Church, banned in Spain, awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and admired by film audiences the world over. (in Spanish with English subtitles)
Wages of Fear
| February 24 and 25, 11:30am1952, Henri-Georges Clouzot, France & Italy, 131m
Henri-Georges Clouzot directed this tense and suspenseful drama about four men so desperate for freedom that they willingly risk their lives to deliver a dangerous cargo.
The film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema.- Roger Ebert (in French with English subtitles)
Walkabout
| January 22, 7:20 & January 24, 9:201971, Nicolas Roeg, Australia, 100m
Hailed as a masterpiece upon release, Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout is the story of two Australian children left to make their way through the outback after their father's suicide They befriend an aboriginal youth on "walkabout" (a six-month long ritualistic banishment from his tribe). (in English)
Wild Strawberries
| January 14, 5:45 & January 15, 5:201957, Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 90m
Wild Strawberries is one of Ingmar Bergman's richest and most life-affirming films, a lyrical reflection on life's disappointments in the form of a spiritual journey. The movie stars Victor Sjostrom as Professor Isak Borg, an elderly academic who has an existential crisis triggered by dreams and memories in which he is confronted with past disappointments, missed opportunities, and troubled personal relationships. (in Swedish with English subtitles)
WR: The Mysteries of the Organism
| January 12, 9:40 & January 17, 5:101971, Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia, 85m
Director Dusan Makavejev deftly juxtaposes the story of a sexual tryst between a liberated woman and a repressed Soviet figure skater with a politicized exploration of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich's controversial theories. (in English & Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles)
Zazie in the Metro
| March 3 and 4, 11:30am1960, Louis Malle, France, 89m
A sassy young girl embarks on a madcap Parisian adventure when she visits her transvestite uncle and takes a raucous sightseeing tour of the city. In true slapstick fashion, she encounters various nutty characters and unusual situations, culminating in a food fight in a cafe. (in French with English subtitles)